Gilbert & Sullivan would have loved Ted Lasso — absurd and friendly and ever, ever obsessed with having its pathos and eating it too. I write this in a period of what I would describe as post-post-backlash: there was a period where America, particularly during COVID, was obsessed with Ted Lasso, and the a period after that where it was considered overrated and smarmy and pedestrian, and now a point where it is largely — not forgotten, as I'm sure the fourth season will be Apple TV's biggest launch ever — consigned to neither being the center of the brief schizophrenic cultural zeitgeist nor being rubbed out of existence entirely.

I think Ted Lasso's first season is trifling, and a good way to spend some time, and not exactly Great Television. Sudeikis gives a great performance despite a script that cannot decide whether he is competent or caricature; the supporting cast is all winning, and as long as you don't look at the edges of anything for too long you won't be upset. It has, I think, the signature Bill Lawrence (of Scrubs) touch: charming and clever and snackable and mostly empty — but we all deserve a cheat meal every once in a while.

(It is both entertaining and, I think, illustrative, how deeply uninterested the show is with the actual mechanics of football. I love the idea of an EPL team having never done suicides before.)

★★★